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DETROIT: 

FREE PRESS MAMMOTH BOOK AND JOB PRINTING HOUSE. 
1861. 




A THANKSGIVING DISCOURSE. 



THE 



RULE OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE 



APPLICABLE TO TEE 



PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 



DELIVERED IN THE 



FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF DETROIT, 



Thursday, November 28, 1860. 



BY GEO. DUFFIELD. 



DETROIT: 

FREE PRESS MAMMOTH BOOK AND JOB PRINTING HOUSE 
1861. 



E4 

.5 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



Detroit, January 19, 1861. 
To the Rev. Geo. Duffield, 

Dear Sir: 

Having listened with pleasure 
to your discourse, prepared and delivered on the National Fast 
Day, and being of the opinion that many of the facts and sug- 
gestions therein contained, and much of the counsel affected by 
it might prove of service, if more generally circulated through 
the community, we beg leave to ask of you a copy of the same 
for publication. 

Those of the undersigned, who likewise enjoyed the privilege 
of listening to your Thanksgiving Sermon in November last, 
would be pleased to have a copy of that also, in order that the 
two might be jointly published. 

"We remain, with much respect, 

Your obedient servants, 



H. H. Wells, 


D. Cooper, 


Henry A. Morrow, 


J. W. Tillman, 


Geo. W. Hoffman, 


J. A. Farrell, 


N. Miner Pratt, 


J. S. Farrand, 


C. N. Ganson, 


A. Knight, 


C. H. Buhl, 


W. S. Penfield, 


J. W. Bagley, 


Morse Stuart, 


C. M. Davison, 


C. Van Husan, 


F. J. Dougall, 


Geo. S. Frost. 



Detroit, January 26, 1861. 

To H. H. Wells, Henry A. Morrow, 

Geo. W. Hoffman, J. W. Tillman, and others: 

Gentlemen : 

In the hope you inspire, that the discourses of 
which you request copies, "might prove of service, if more gen- 
erally circulated through the community," it gives me pleasure 
to comply with your recpiest. 

With much respect and Christian regard, 

I remain, yours, truly, 

Geo. Duffield. 



THANKSGIVING DISCOURSE. 



JERE. 18: 7, 8. "At what instant I shall speak concerning a 
nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and 
to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn 
from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto 
them." 



Our annual day of Thanksgiving meets us under 
circumstances so strongly marked, and of such strik- 
ing contrast, as to bid us "rejoice with fear and 
trembling." Seldom has there been a year so 
crowned with the goodness of the Lord, in many re- 
spects, as the past. "His paths have dropped fat- 
ness," and "the little hills have rejoiced on every 
side." Abundant, exuberant crops have poured plenty 
into the lap of the husbandman; the fruits of the 
earth have been reaped and gathered, and stored in 
richest profusion ; commerce and trade had recovered 
from the embarrassments and distrust, for a year or 
two previous, so prevalent and perplexing; no pesti- 
lence has invaded our cities, nor disease of mortal 
malignity prostrated any wide extent' of our country ; 
nor epidemic any limited district. The seasons have 
been marked with health, and unusually exempt from 
extreme degrees of heat or cold, or sudden and vio- 
lent fluctuations. Tempests and tornadoes, floods and 



flames, have accomplished less than ordinary destruc- 
tion. The ravages of death have been more than 
ordinarily restrained. The mortality of our city has 
been much less than usual, and no conflagration, or 
calamity of a public nature, has filled our habitations 
with sorrow. Although sad and painful calamities 
have here and there occurred, and we have been 
called, as a congregation, to mourn with parents 
whose hearts were broken by the untimely loss of a 
beloved and promising son; yet much fewer than in 
previous years, have been the visits required from 
us to the city of the dead. And although here and 
there, in the southern portions of our land, the show- 
ers of heaven have been withheld, the verdant field 
turned into a dry and barren waste, and the hideous 
spectre of famine reared her frightful form in some 
of our distant borders, yet has there been more than 
abundance to meet the deficiency of provender and 
provisions thus caused, and a prompt exercise of gen- 
erous liberality, to prevent and mitigate the threat- 
ened suffering. k 'The pastures have been clothed 
with flocks, the valleys, also, have been covered over 
with corn/' and the shout of joy, and the song of 
praise, have ascended from nearly every corner of our 
land. 

Amid these tokens of unmerited goodness, how- 
ever, are to be seen indications of a fearful and por- 
tentous nature. It has been a year of religious de- 
clension. But few revivals of religion have blessed 
the churches. The zeal and prayerfulness of many 
have subsided into monotonous formality. "The sol- 
emn leasts 1 ' and Sabbaths have by many been forgot- 



ten. The sanctuaries of the Lord have been dese- 
crated ; few have come to the solemn assemblies. Vice 
and immorality, in various forms, are on the increase ; 
intemperance laughs at the restraints of the law; 
public opinion sustains not its enforcement; profes- 
sors of religion extensively frown upon and condemn 
attempts for that purpose. The Sabbath has become 
a day of traffic, of sensual indulgence, and of noisy 
amusement, and drunken excesses and brawls; and 
places of corruption, whirlpools of perdition, spring 
up around, while magistrates, ministers of justice and 
law, and multitudes that name the name of Christ, 
rest at ease, and consent and "love to have it so." 
Party political strifes have greatly neutralized chris- 
tian influence. The wicked have walked on every 
side, and vile and unprincipled men have been ex- 
alted, by catering to the corrupt passions and de- 
praved appetites of the lovers of strong drink. Noth- 
ing, comparatively worth speaking of, is done to stay 
the tide of intemperance and of Sabbath desecration, 
which are sweeping so many of our youth and oth- 
ers to the drunkard's grave. God's gifts have been 
abused. ' His mercies have been despised or forgot- 
ten. "Dumb dogs, that cannot bark," have stood as 
sentinels of the press; and the work of corruption, 
the ravages of intemperance, the increase of crime, 
move forward without molestation, or hindrance of 
any great efficiency from officers of justice, churches 
of the living God, and christian professors generally. 
These are alarming requitals for the goodness and 
mercy and loving kindness of the Lord. Suddenly, 
and most unexpectedly, in the midst of abundance, 



a cloud of gloom and darkness overspreads the sky. 
Extraordinary dispensation- of Providence excite 
alarming apprehensions. The bonds of Union, that 
have for nearly three-fourths of a century held us 
united as a confederate government of free and inde- 
pendent States, become relaxed, and threat- of sever- 
ance and separation are heard. A panic in the com- 
mercial world produces dismay; State securities and 
stocks of every sort are depreciated : an inflated cur- 
rency excites distrust; business and trade have become 
stagnant ; embarrassments are thrown in the way of for- 
warding our abundant crops to market; exchange, for 
a season, is rendered almost impracticable; the Lord 
has blown upon men's anticipated gains, and "he 
that earneth wages, earneth wages to put it into a bag 
with holes." Consternation seizes the wise and the 
wary; confusion takes the place of confidence; and 
the providence of God is heard to "speak enact rning 
the nation" and government, not as it was hoped it 
would, to plant and prosper, but "to pluck up, and 
to pull down, and to destroy." 

It behooves us, on such an occasion as the pres- 
ent — met as we are to render thanks to God for 
mercies abounding — to ponder also, and seek to profit 
from judgments impending. God, in a season of 
prosperity, security and increasing sinful provocation, 
has suddenly gi\*eu warning of approaching .judgments. 
He thus calls to repentance and reformation. If 
they are not so improved, men may please them- 
selves with hopes of deliverance or safety, and think, 
by their wisdom and skill, to prevent or counteract 
threatened ills; but the wisdom of the wise will be 



9 

found foolishness, and the resources of the mighty 
utterly weak and unavailing. There is but one way 
of averting the Divine displeasure, and escaping 
from impending judgment; that is, repentance and 
reformation. "If the nation," saith God, "against 
whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will 
repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them." 

Such is THE RULE OF HlS RIGHTEOUS PROVIDENCE. 

We invite your attention to it as applicable to 

THE PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES OF OUR COUNTRY. 

I. The rule itself becomes a righteous God, 
in His government of the world. There is, in 
the minds of men, an inward sense of right — 
a deep and abiding conviction — that they .should 
suffer, who, having been previously warned, will 
not repent of their sins. It is not necessary 
that one man teach this to another. It is insepa- 
rable from our intelligent nature. Every man intui- 
tively feels, in his own conscious convictions, with 
respect to himself and others, that impenitent sin- 
ners, incurable by divine warning, are proper objects 
of the divine displeasure. Impunity, under such cir- 
cumstances, would prove a great temptation to athe- 
ism. It is right and becoming, therefore, that God, 
in His own time and way, should vindicate His 
faithfulness, by executing His threatenings. For, if 
men can at any time banish the fear and restraint 
of impending judgments, and persuade themselves 
there is no danger of coming wrath, no God that 
judgeth righteously on the earth, there is nothing 
too vile, dishonest, profane and flagitious, they will 
not eventually consent to and commit, "Because 



10 

sentence against an evil work is not speedily exe- 
cuted, therefore the heart of the sons of men is 
fully set in them to do evil." 

It is with nations as with individuals; long 
continued prosperity, and escape from threatened 
and impending judgments, amid growing vice 
and immorality, tend to hardness of heart, profli- 
gacy of life, imperious oppression, increasing cor- 
ruption, and provocations of crime. Those that 
love and fear God, who prize His gospel, and 
seek to do right, instinctively cry to Him for re- 
dress, deliverance, and safety, when provoking sins 
and abounding crimes prevail. The Spirit leads them 
thus to pray, and God has promised to hear their 
prayer. Should iniquity always triumph, and impu- 
nity in this world always accompany provoking 
crimes and a corrupt administration of government, 
the temptation would be too strong for the faith of 
weak believers. Hence the interpositions of severe 
and sudden wrath, occasionally, by signal and right- 
eous judgment, where warnings and impending evils 
have not produced repentance and reformation. It 
is right and becoming in a holy God, who has said 
He will "avenge His elect that cry unto Him day 
and night," thus to vindicate His faithfulness and 
glory. 

II. In applying this rule to the circumstances of 
our own country, there are several inquiries of im- 
portance for us successively to consider; and, 

First. What indications are there of iniquities so 
abounding, and of judgments so impending, as to call 
for speedy repentance in order to escape greater 



11 

evils'? As to the first part of this inquiry, we re- 
mark, that there is no need for us to enter into a 
specific enumeration of all sorts of crimes, in their 
varieties, observable at this day in our country. We 
may differ also from others and many, in our esti- 
mate of particular vices in societj^. It will be suffi- 
cient, briefly, to state a few things, which, the sacred 
Scriptures teach us, indicate a corrupt state of soci- 
ety, requiring repentance and reformation for deliv- 
erance from impending judgments. 

1. The first is, when all sorts of crimes are on 
the increase. Such a state of things indicates a gen- 
eral corrupt state of society, like that of the prophet 
referred to in Israel, when he lamented, " Ah, sinful 
nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil- 
doers, children that are corrupters, they have forsa- 
ken the Lord; they have provoked the Holy One of 
Israel to anger; they have gone away backward."* 
That vice and immorality are on the increase 
in our land, none can deny. The statistics of 
crime, the columns of the daily gazettes, prove it. 
It is not designed to intimate, that, as a people, we 
are as corrupt as are other nations which might be 
named, or as we may }^et become without repent- 
ance and reformation. But there are few provoking 
sins condemned in the word of God, and known to 
be worthy of punishment by man' as well as God, 
that are not to be found in the catalogue of our 
guilt as a people. From the most impudent and 
law-defying atheism — that has attempted to impose 
upon the common sense of the communities in our 

* Isaiah 1 : 5. 



12 

large cities, especially New York, by claiming the 
protection of our federal constitution for theatrical 
exhibitions, and musical concerts, and lager beer fes- 
tivals on the Sabbath, in open defiance of municipal 
law and public sentiment, under the blasphemous 
pretext of these things being their worship and 
their rights of conscience — down through the vilest 
intemperance, sensuality and uncleanness, to every 
phase of dishonesty, deception, oppression, and moral 
degradation, may we trace the black and odious list. 
Who will dare to make it a plea with God on our be- 
half, that we are free from prevalent profanity, horrid 
oaths and blasphemies, open and wanton desecration 
of the Sabbath, filial disobedience, contempt of pa- 
rental authority, bloodshed, murder, drunkenness, licen- 
tiousness, lewdness, repudiation of marriage contracts, 
adultery, theft, burglary, swindling, wholesale fraud and 
gambling of every hateful sort, oppression, slavery, 
with all its catalogue of abominations, falsehood and 
defamation of every type, and avarice with its end- 
less cruelties and exactions'? Not one. Not only 
have these sins a growing prevalence, indicating a 
corrupt state of society, but a second indication of 
this observable is, that: 

2. All sorts of persons, and ever}* grade of soci- 
ety, are involved in them; many by their own personal 
guilt ) still more by not doing what they can to prevent 
them in others. All sorts of persons, in every pro- 
fession and vocation, are found consenting to the re- 
laxation of law, and to the venality of officers of gov- 
ernment. The proof of this is to be seen; in eleva- 
ting corrupt men to places of trust and power; in 



13 

not testifying openly and publicly against the vices 
prevalent; in indifference and refusal to adopt and 
co-operate in measures for the execution of law ; and 
in not mourning for what they cannot remedy. 
And not only is the world around full of such sins 
as are its own, appropriate to men of unbelieving 
minds, and unrenewed by the spirit of holiness. But, 
3. A third characteristic is, that churches, 
and professors of religion extensively, are not free 
from a participation in them, but practice such as are 
peculiar to them — pride, vanity, boasting, ostenta- 
tion, self-righteousness, luxury, covetousness, ambition, 
sensuality, conformity to corrupt fashions, and drink- 
ing usages, formality, deadness and coldness in reli- 
gion, indifference to the cause of God, the claims of 
the Sabbath, and public morals, rivalry, proselytism, 
want of cordial co-operation, self-applause, loss of zeal 
for God and Christ, seeking their own ease, hypoc- 
risy, and making religion often a cloak for unright- 
eousness, or a stepping-stone to commercial, politi- 
cal, or social ambitious preferment. These things 
are so obvious, that all the fair glosses of a mere 
profession of religion cannot conceal them. Thus is 
Christ wounded in the house of His friends; and 
many of the wicked stumble, and find occasion to 
reproach and blaspheme, and proclaim themselves 
skeptical and devoid of confidence altogether in re- 
lation to real vital godliness. Certainly such things 
call for repentance, and cannot be sufficiently be- 
wailed. Sad evidence is there, not only that the 
foolish, but that all the virgins, wise and foolish, slum- 
ber and sleep while the Lord delayeth His coming. 



14 

4. Beside these, we may discern indications, that, 
in some respects, our sins, more strictly nation- 
al, are becoming more than ordinarily aggrava- 
ted, and that in despite of solemn warning. Intem- 
perance has been, and yet is, one of our national 
sins. It has been fearfully rebuked by the annual 
immolation of 100,000 of our fellow citizens, by the 
steady increase of onerous taxes, by crowded jails 
and poor houses, by the multiplication of the insane, 
by demands for lunatic and drunkards' and other 
asylums, and by the lawlessness, and murders, and 
other crimes it produces. Yet public opinion treats 
it as a matter of indifference ; will not sanction and 
call for the enforcement of the prohibitory liquor 
law; elevates to office men that treat it with con- 
tempt; sustains and justifies public functionaries sworn 
to enforce the laws, who perjure themselves by not 
doing it; looks, with allowance and approbation, upon 
the conspiracy of liquor dealers to defy the law and 
tread down the Sabbath ; and countenances the vend- 
ing and use of adulterated and poisonous mixtures, 
known, and publicly proved, to be abominable and 
murderous frauds practiced on the community. 
With all the clear light upon this subject, and the 
numerous rebukes, which God in his providence ad- 
ministers for this sin, it is no small aggravation of 
our guilt, that such a state of things, on the part of 
rulers and ruled, should continue. 

Another of our great national sins, becoming 
more and more aggravated, is the growing prac- 
tical contempt for the moral obligation of con- 
contracts. The federal government violated the 



15 

faith of its treaties with the Cherokee Indians. Of- 
ficial oaths are extensively disregarded. A man's 
word in business, especially his promise, was once 
extensively regarded as good as his bond. Honor 
and honesty were safeguards of social compacts. 
But now, no man regards himself safe from imposi- 
tion and unfaithfulness to promises and contracts, 
except in so far as he can vindicate his claims and 
rights by process of law. Even securities, given ac- 
cording to law, for the faithful performance of offi- 
cial duties, or in private contracts, are regarded as 
worthless, and laughed at both in the church and in 
the world. Subscriptions, on the part both of reli- 
gious professors and irreligious men, even when ex- 
pressed in promissory notes, are repudiated without 
shame and compunction. Men accept of places of 
trust, and ridicule the idea of their being required 
or expected faithfully to discharge their duties. 
Stations of influence, places of power and patronage 
are sought, not for the public good, but for personal 
advantage. Covenant engagements, and the duties 
thence arising, even among church members, are es- 
teemed but light affairs, relinquishable at will. Re- 
ligious professors, in managing voluntary societies, 
and religious associations and congregations, under 
various pretexts, pervert funds, alienate property, and 
set examples of robbery and fraud, allied to the 
swindling operations of unprincipled men in banks, 
and other corporate companies. The provisions of 
Federal and State constitutions are disregarded ; and 
Legislative enactments and judiciary decisions are 
framed to render them worthless. Honest, confiding, 



16 

conscientious, order-loving and law-abiding citizens, 
are betrayed and robbed by the promises and schemes 
of speculators. One generation begins to sneer at the 
idea of compacts being binding on them, which have 
descended from a former. The son repudiates the 
obligations of the father. Many repudiate their own, 
and fail, or make assignments, after having covered 
up whatever property they can conceal, and eventually 
are found to have purchased their own notes at 
heavy discounts, and defrauded their creditors. 
"Judgment is fallen in the streets, and equity can- 
not enter." The very ligaments of the social state 
are sundered. Even the marriage compact begins to 
be regarded by many as binding only as long as 
convenient. 

Another of our great national sins beginning 
to develop itself is the avaricious pursuit of gain. 
Commercial greatness is the idol and ambition 
of all our chief cities. Desire for wealth, in 
rapid and large accumulation, renders many ready to 
prey, each upon his neighbor, and laugh at the idea 
of honor or honesty in commercial transactions, be- 
yond the flagrant offenses which can be detected 
and punished at law. It is becoming characteristic 
of us, as a people, to sacrifice time, social and do- 
mestic comfort, and to neglect the means of moral and 
religious improvement, in the mad and hot pursuit 
of wealth. Nothing but amusement attracts the 
masses -, science and religion have but few votaries 
that can give an evening or two a week for im- 
provement. God has rebuked this spirit, again and 
again, by the embarrassments of trade, the revul- 



17 

sions in the market, the panics started, the depreci- 
ation of stocks and property, and the destruction of 
confidence and credit in business. Yet no change, 
no repentance, no reformation takes place, but the 
absorption of mind and heart, and the rush, are as 
great as ever, and greater, after extravagant profits 
and illicit gain, whenever the pressure of impending 
judgment is lightened. After repeated warnings, such 
things greatly aggravate the guilt of that "covet- 
ousness which is idolatry." 

It is scarcely necessary to add, that slavery, 
with its accompaniments and consequents, is another 
of our great national evils and God-provoking sins. 
But the violence of party strife, the alienations and 
rivalries, the jealousies, and fears, and reproaches, 
and collisions of interest between those involved in 
it and those relatively affected by it, and the con- 
tests for political victory, in the absence of moral 
influence and fraternal sympathy and good will, 
have thrown far back, apparently, the day of re- 
pentance and reformation. Passion has taken the 
place of reason. Prejudice has overpowered con- 
science. Christianity has been invoked to subsidize 
oppression. Churches have been rent. Alienations 
have been rendered apparently incurable, and loud 
threats are heard of secession, separation, and disso- 
lution of the Union. These things are omens of 
dread import, and they suggest a second leading in- 
quiry : 

Second. What are the ordinary impending judg- 
ments, foretokening approaching crises of distress, 
calamity or ruin, and which can only be prevented 
2 



18 

by repentance] Judgments, as we learn from the 
sacred Scriptures, are either of a temporal or spir- 
itual nature. Of the former, are seasons of afflic- 
tion, wide-spread disease, especially visitations of 
pestilence, seasons of want and privation, when the 
Lord turns His hand upon men's gains, withers their 
crops, blasts their fields, destroys their business, and 
renders their labor and industry unproductive and 
valueless. A third method is when He sends the 
ravages of mildew and various insects, drought-, 
floods, tempests, tornadoes and such like, that cause 
suffering and famine to a greater or less extent. A 
fourth is, when He lets loose the restraints of His 
providence, and allows assaults and injuries and tell 
passions prevailing, to lead to war. Another method 
is to make rulers a curse, and cause the people to 
suffer from mercenary cruelty and oppression by ru- 
inous policy adopted, or utter recklessness and prof- 
ligacy, and infidelity in the execution of their trust 
and responsibilities. And still another and disas- 
trous method is, to inflict spiritual judgments, by 
withholding His Holy Spirit, so that the churches, 
becoming cold and dead, corrupt, and copying the 
fashions of the world, make a profession of religion 
such a formal, hypocritical thing, that it loses all its 
moral power and redeeming influence. 

All these things are tokens of the divine displeas- 
ure. Whenever and wherever they occur, loud are the 
calls of God to immediate repentance. We need 
not say, that in retracing the history of the past 
sixty years, we can discern all these things to have 
occurred among ourselves. Seasons of agricultural, 



19 

manufacturing and commercial prosperity, through 
years of general health, have been followed with 
seasons of disease, commercial disaster, visitations in 
different forms of pestilence, partial famines, war, and 
general anxiety and distress. Seasons of great and 
extensive revival and religious awakening, have been 
succeeded by those of stupor, worldliness, sensuality 
and selfishness, awakening the uneasy fears of 
watchmen stationed on the walls of the church, and 
others seeking the honor of God and the salvation 
of men. 

Divine Providence has afflicted us as a people in 
the most marked manner, again and again; and the 
present money panic, in the midst of abundance and 
animating prospects of commercial prosperity — occur- 
ring in a day of religious declension, and immedi- 
ately consequent on political contests and jubilations — 
seems to be the very voice of God, proclaiming His 
displeasure, and calling to repentance. We may 
think, and say, that it has been unnecessary, and re- 
fer it to this cause and the other-, to political in- 
trigues, or the rage of disappointed partisans, or cu- 
pidity of scheming speculators; and we may say, as 
we read the movements of Providence, that they 
who have sown the. wind, are reaping the whirl- 
wind. But the fact is not to be questioned, that 
suddenly, as by the violent jerk of a powerful bit 
in the jaws, the prancing fiery steed has been reined 
in, and made almost to fall, so has the commercial 
world been arrested, and made for a moment to 
stand amazed and tremble. It is the call of God: 
"Repent, and turn yourselves from all your trans- 



20 

gressions, so that your iniquity does not prove your 
ruin/' Warning after warning has been given — re- 
buke after rebuke, and now, unexpectedly, in rapid 
succession, in the midst of rejoicings, and when least 
expected, it is repeated, as though some fearful crisis 
in Providence is at hand. 

What that crisis is, is obvious to every intelli- 
gent observer of passing events. It is the dissolu- 
tion of the Union, that binds together in harmony 
and prosperity this great confederacy of free and 
independent States. Such an event could not fail 
to produce results in every respect to be deprecated, 
if not fatally disastrous to the future well-being of 
these United States, severally as well as collectively. 
The history of the revolution, and of the trials and 
frequent agony of the great father of his country, 
raised up and sustained so wonderfully by a gra- 
cious Providence, during the }^ears of contest with 
Great Britain, proved the perils and perplexities of 
a mere States' compact and legislative council, 
which formed the bond of union among associated 
colonies, or brought men together by pressing exi- 
gencies. The federal constitution, framed with so 
much care and wisdom by the great patriots and 
statesmen assembled in convention in 1787 — the 
names of many of whom emblazon the annals of 
our country's fame, — and adopted successively, with 
amendments, suggested by different individual States, 
became a bond of union of such enhanced force and 
aptitude, that when consummated by the organiza- 
tion of a federal government, was thought and pro- 
claimed by multitudes to be perpetual and indisso- 



21 

luble. It has been the element of our greatness 
and glory as a free and independent nation — the 
very centre of endless processes of our country's in- 
dustry and prosperity. Like the heart in the hu- 
man body, which sends its throbbing pulsations 
through all the arteries and veins, bearing life, nour- 
ishment and vigor, so has it, through all our civil, 
political, commercial, financial and productive sys- 
tems, united and assimilated increasing millions in 
one vast giant confederacy, which has stretched its 
vigorous growth across the continent, nearly from 
the frozen region of the north, to the torrid equa- 
torial climes. Its power and glory have astonished 
the world, as by the blessings of Divine Providence 
it has turned the desert into an Eden, and made 
the wilderness to blossom as the rose. Like the 
Orient sun, it has poured forth its radiant beams, 
waxing in its strength, as its splendor advanced, 
from hemisphere to hemisphere, and illumined the 
globe. While wretchedness, tyranny and crime set- 
tled in deep midnight gloom on other lands, and 
wars and desolation filled their inhabitants with 
consternation and horror, here all was prosperity 
and happiness, grandeur and glory, under its vital- 
izing power. Like the gravitating force which 
gives stability to the earth, it has been the primum 
mobile of our Union, which nothing but violence, 
like earthquake throes, could rend. The volcanic 
fires of mad, impetuous passion alone, confined and 
struggling beneath our foundations, and not external 
violence, are the only source of danger to the sta- 
bility and perpetuity of that constitution, which, for 



22 

nearly three-quarters of a century, lias harmonized 
and united this great confederac} 7 . 

But now alarm exists extensively, lest dangers 
from this source are close upon us. Quivering 
shocks, spasmodic tremblings, and heaving undula- 
tions, have sent the thrill of terror into myriads of 
palpitating hearts. The governing authorities, the 
veteran statesmen, the wise and sober counselors, 
and devoted patriots, are not without solicitude and 
fears. Should passion reign, and the great God of 
nations, who has hitherto protected and preserved 
us, withdraw His guardianship, our securities are 
gone. If once "He arises to shake terribly the 
earth," our lofty, proud and stable edifice must top- 
ple to the ground. Who can estimate the ruin that 
a few moments of such earthquake shocks, the revo- 
lutionary violence of wild, careering fires of passion, 
may produce? Time may indeed repair them; but 
at what an immense expenditure of life, and prop- 
erty, and labor! The rending of the bonds that 
hold these States in union, the secession and separation 
of one or more, by open, violent rejection and defiance 
of constitutional compacts, must prove the first 
throes of disastrous revolutions, in long succession, 
beyond all power of human sagacity to foresee, or 
human wisdom and might to arrest and counteract. 
Thus did they in the history of the separation of 
the tribes of Israel. Our prosperity, our safety, our 
hope as a nation, depend upon a wisdom and a power 
that can hush the hurtling tempest, and quench the 
smouldering, struggling fires, or open some volcanic 
vent, like the safety valve, and bid them exhaust 



23 

themselves at their leisure. God alone can give the 
wisdom to do this. He, only, is competent to apply 
the hand that shall save. The rule of His provi- 
dence, illustrated and established in the history of 
other nations, and as mighty as our own, is applica- 
ble to us in present circumstances. "At what in- 
stant I speak concerning a nation, and concerning a 
kingdom; to pluck up and to pull down, and to de- 
stroy it; if that nation against whom I have pro- 
nounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the 
evil that I thought to do unto it." Repentance 
and reformation, sustaining an appeal to Him, will 
as truly save our country now, as it ever did Nine- 
veh, or Israel, or Judah, or our sires of revolutionary 
piety and patriotism. 

Third. But here a third question is pertinent: 
How are such repentance and reformation to be se- 
cured? It will be, as it often has been, asked, how 
are we, as a people, to turn from the evil which has 
caused God in His providence to pronounce against 
us? One party says, abolish slavery; another says, 
violate no longer constitutional compacts. Crimina- 
tions and recriminations have thence arisen. Taunts, 
jeers, reproaches, daring and provoking challenges, on 
the one hand, exasperate and madden. Unfounded alle- 
gations and passionate phrenzy, excited by misappre- 
hension, misrepresentation, suspicions, and fallacious 
reasonings, on the other hand, are thrown back with 
intense violence. Interests are found in conflict. 
Reason is blinded by passion. The complications 
and surroundings of the policies of antagonistic par- 
ties admit not of prompt, easy, categorical adjust- 



24 

merit. Morally and religiously, judgment, conscience, 
and feeling, among great masses of our population, 
are found at variance. 

The question of slavery has already divided 
North and South, as really in a moral, and eccle- 
siastical, and social point of view, as were the tribes 
of Israel separated in the days of Rehoboam, and 
Jeroboam. And Jerusalem and Samaria were 
not more effectually made the seat and centres 
of discordant and uncongenial, moral and commercial 
systems, than the agitation of this subject seems to 
have prepared the way for Charleston and New 
York, or Boston to become the focus, of rival oppos- 
ing and antagonistic systems of religions, as well as 
of political and commercial influence. The breach 
in the confederacy of the twelve tribes of the Jew- 
ish nation — which confederacy, to some extent, formed 
the model, and suggested mairy of the principles in- 
corporated in our own — became irremediable, from 
the moment that the religious and social feelings 
were alienated, and gathered around Mount Gerizim 
and Mount Moriah, as the seats and centres of rival 
and opposing systems of spiritual influence. In such 
a state of things, amid the ruins of divided churches, 
the fjuestion becomes agitating and alarming; is it 
posible, can any thing be done to prevent repellent 
and abhorrent feelings, sustained by rival and op- 
posing fanaticisms, from producing lasting and incu- 
rable alienations and disunions] Here, here precisely, 
is where we feel that the greatest danger lies. The 
South have their religious views and feelings, accor- 
dant with the teachings of their pulpits, and the 



25 

trainings of education, on the subject of slavery. The 
North have theirs. Neither seem prepared, soberly 
and considerately to apply the spirit of Christ and the 
teachings of the Scriptures, in the exercise of forbear- 
ance and brotherly regards, for the solution of the 
various entangling and intricate questions of sin and 
duty connected with it. 

The spirit of repentance and reformation in both 
is indispensable, for the exercise of sound judgment 
and a good conscience in the premises, and for se- 
curing the help and favor of Divine Providence. 
But our case is by no means desperate. There are 
some things which can be clone, and the religious 
and christian portion of the country must initiate 
them. 

Let it be made known and fully understood, 
that the compromises of the constitution shall be 
faithfully kept and honestly carried out, so that an 
example be given, of practical respect for the sacred- 
ness of social compacts, and of an abiding sense of 
moral obligation. Let party spirit and sectional 
strifes give place to patriotic love of country. Let 
angry denunciations, and a bitter spirit of mutual 
crimination and animosity, be supplanted by the 
friendly feeling of one common citizenship, and the 
regards of fraternal good will and affection. Let a 
reckless partisan and venal press be rebuked, and a 
public sentiment be formed, founded on truth, and 
right, and loyal attachment to the Union of these 
States. Let the patriotic devotion, which inspired 
our sires with invincible attachment to one common 
cause and country, inspire their sons, and make us 



26 

true to the constitution and government they founded. 
Let there be a return to the principles and policy 
which characterized the administration of Washing- 
ton. Let the government be administered, not for 
private emolument, or party victors, or sectional in- 
terests and ambitions, or theoretical purposes, or 
schemes of political aggrandizement, or territorial ac- 
quisitions and conquests; but for the public good. 
Let moneyed aristocracies, and chartered monopolies, 
and secret conspiracies of trade, and transported na- 
tionalities, and privileged and corrupt corporations, 
bow before the majesty of a virtuous people, bent 
on the maintenance of equal rights, and the diffu- 
sion, as far as practicable, of the greatest amount of 
equality in social condition, in wealth, and in edu- 
cation. Let men of integrity, and worthy of trust, 
be elevated to office, and none be called to discharge 
the functions of authority, who are ignorant, incapa- 
ble, and reckless of social and moral obligation. 
Let the judge, or legislator, or public functionary, 
known to receive a bribe, or make his official duty 
truckle to his selfish and pecuniary interest, be pun- 
ishable for criminal offense, and forever ineligible to 
any office. Let the laws be faithfully executed by 
the officers appointed for that purpose. And let pen- 
alties, specifically provided for by law, be imposed 
on every officer, sworn to perforin the duties of his 
office, who neglects, fails, or refuses to discharge the 
same, or to render the service required by the law 
for its enforcement. 

The want of concurrent fidelity on the part of 
magistrates and officers, in the enforcement of law, 



27 

will be sure to frustrate any and every attempt at 
general repentance and reformation. The spirit of 
lawlessness abroad in the land — which tramples com- 
pacts under feet, and defies the execution of laws 
for good order and the general good — is the legiti- 
mate result of examples, set by governmental au- 
thorities, from the highest to the lowest, who have 
betrayed and abused the trust reposed in them as 
public functionaries and guardians of the general 
weal. When magistrates and public officers are 
profane swearers, Sabbath breakers, drunkards, liars, 
scoffers at religion, covetous, oppressors, and violators 
of law themselves, the greatest obstacles are thrown 
in the way of public repentance and reformation. 
The guilt of perjury is thus superadded to all other 
miscarriages and personal sins. Wrath from God 
accumulates rapidly against a people that will con- 
sent to such a state of things. 

Ministers of religion, and people at large, must 
aim at, and carry on a work of repentance and 
reformation, where such things exist, if they would 
turn away the judgments of God, impending over a 
guilty land. No work of repentance or reformation 
ever was carried on among a people, where the laws 
against flagitious immoralities were not enforced, and 
men entrusted with power did not evince that it 
was their determination to have offenders punished. 
Joshua, David, Hezekiah, and others, accomplished 
wonders, by their zealous fidelity in the discharge of 
their official trusts and obligations. And true, relia- 
ble, and faithful rulers yet can accomplish marvel- 
ous results. Let but the Sunday laws, and the pro- 



28 

hibitory liquor laws, and others against vice and 
immorality, be faithfully executed, and we shall 
quickly see a work of repentance and reformation 
prevail to turn away impending judgments from the 
kind. 

A very large amount of our national guilt is to be 
traced to the Sabbath desecration and intemperance, 
that have disgraced our halls of legislation, from the 
Common Councils of our cities, up to the State Leg- 
islatures, and the Congress of the United States. 
No wonder if God, in His providence, should turn 
His hand against us, to smite us with the rod of 
His displeasure, and let the demons of discord and 
confusion loose among us, if we neglect the obliga- 
tions of morality and good faith. He does not ordi- 
narily bring wasting and desolating judgments on a 
people or nation, without having given previous 
warning of their approach ; and never without good 
reason for it. For 120 years, He admonished the 
world for its wickedness, before He overthrew it 
with a flood. Sodom and Gomorrha perished not, 
till after they had rejected the counsel and admo- 
nition of Lot, and utterly corrupted themselves. Je- 
rusalem and Judah, Samaria and Israel, Egypt and 
Nineveh, and Tyre, and Babylon, and Greece, and all 
the great nations of antiquity, which have perished, 
had their warnings and seasons of repentance and 
reformation, that postponed for a season the crisis 
of their ruin. That came not, till they became re- 
gardless of warning, and hardened themselves in 
their wickedness. 



29 

The nations of modern Europe have had their 
days of warning; and judgment has delayed, as 
they have repented and turned from their wicked- 
ness. We are yet a young nation. Our crimes 
have not yet filled up the cup of our iniquity. 
God has lavished favors on us. No nation under 
heaven has shared so largely of His bounties as we 
have done. He has been loath to give us up, 
The corner stone of our great edifice was laid in faith, 
and prayer ascending from the hearts of many de- 
vout patriots and saints of God. He has yet much 
people in this land. The gospel here is yet cher- 
ished, and spreads its hallowing influence among us. 
Schools, colleges, institutions of learning, charity, 
and piety, rear their attractive towers. Churches 
of the living God flourish, and multiply still among 
us. Again and again has He poured out His 
Spirit upon us; and the people having extensively 
repented and turned from their wickedness, He 
has turned His wrath from us. God seems loath 
to abandon us. He loves us for the fathers' sake \ 
and He is saying: "How shall I give thee up, 
Ephraim? How shall I deliver thee, Israel? How 
shall I make thee as Adrnah? How shall I set 
thee as Zeboim? My heart is turned within me: 
my repentings are kindled together." 

Much as there is ground to fear, there is still 
more for hope. We have His pledge, that if we 
repent of the evils we have done, He will repent 
of the evil He thought to do unto us. If He has 
sent a panic, originating in political causes, to alarm 
and excite dismay, He has done it, under circum- 



stances when its results may be most easily obvi- 
ated. In the midst of plenty, in the midst of 
rejoicings, the alarm is sounded that we be not 
surfeited with excess. And can we not discern ob- 
stacles, marked and peculiar, thrown by His provi- 
dence in the way of impetuous passion, and of the 
wild and frantic strife for which the bugle blasts have 
here and there been already blown? The contrast 
of condition, in fiscal matters, between the North 
and South, has thrown power into the hands 
of those called to forbearance and prudence, and 
taken it from those whose voice is lifted up for 
severance and disunion. Foreign and domestic ex- 
changes are greatly in favor of the former. The 
materiel of prosperity is profusely laid to their hands. 
A wholesome check is given to reckless banking. 
Never could there have been circumstances less 
propitious to division, and less open and public pre- 
text for violence. Political parties broken into frag- 
ments ! The dominant majority in the choice of 
their chief magistrate at a fearful dead lock, as to 
power to do harm should they be so disposed ! 
Division of counsel and confusion of purpose among 
the separatists! Our great national Congress on 
the eve of as.se mbling! The Federal Executive au- 
thorities, calm, firm, and determined to exert their 
power wisely, energetically, and without un- 
necessary irritation and exasperation! The chief 
magistrate elect, uncommitted to violent measures; 
untrainmeled by party discipline; untarnished by re- 
prcach even from his foes; unshaken in the confi- 
dence of his friends; undisturbed by the noise of 



31 

surrounding excitement; unmoved in the majesty of 
dignified composure and silence; and quietly wait- 
ing the summons of Providence, to assume and dis- 
charge the solemn and heavy responsibilities to be 
devolved upon him ! Can we not see in all this, 
the ordering of a propitious providence ? God, as it 
were, is waiting for this great nation to turn from 
its evil, and thus give Him occasion for prolonging 
His care, and turning away the evil He had seen 
that we were bringing on ourselves ! 

Should we not, then, in our grateful offerings 
this clay, for the lavish bounties He has scattered 
round us, deeply ponder the rule of His providence, 
applicable to our present circumstances as a l nation? 
And, while repenting of the evils we have done 
and consented to, should we not hopefully lift our 
imploring and believing cry, — "Spare, Lord, our 
guilty land ; give not thy heritage to reproach ; suf- 
fer not the tie that binds us as one to be rent 
asunder ! But, as thou hast been our fathers' God ; 
and led them through the wilderness; and established 
them in this good land ; be thou also the God of 
their children; and to generations yet unborn, trans- 
mit, unbroken, unharmed, and enhanced, the privi- 
leges, liberty and union of these confederate States." 

Oh, God! look down upon the land which Thou hast loved so well, 

And grant that in unbroken truth her children still may dwell ; 

Nor, while the grass grows on the hill, and streams flow through the rale, 

May they forget their father's, or in their covenant fail ! 

God keep the fairest, noblest land that lies beneath the sun : 

" Our country, our whole country, and our country ever one." 



OUR NATIONAL SINS TO BE REPENTED OF, 



gfrntmls 0! §wpe Ux the § mmstiam 



FEDERAL CONSTITUTION AND UNION. 



A DISCOUESE 



DELIVERED 



IF'IFIIID.A-"^, CT^ZLXTTT-^IFl^r 4, 1861, 



DAY OF FASTING, HUMILIATION AND PRATER 



APPOINTED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



BY GEORGE DUFFIELD 

Pastor or the First Presbyterian Congregation of" Detriot- 



DETROIT: 

FREE PRESS MAMMOTH BOOK AND JOB PRINTING HOUSE. 
1861. 



A DISCOUESE. 



1. PSALM 78 : 37, 39. Their heart was not right with Him, neither 
were they steadfast in His covenant. But He being full of com- 
passion, forgave their iniquity and destroyed them not; yea, many 
a time turned He His anger away, and did not stir up all His 
wrath; for He remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that 
passeth away and cometh not again. 

2. PSALM 79: 8,9. O remember not against us former iniquities: 
let Thy tender mercies speedily prevent us; for we are brought 
very low. Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Thy 
name ; and deliver us and purge away our sins, for Thy names' 
sake. 



But five weeks have passed, since we assembled 
in this place, to render our thanks to Almighty 
God, for His great goodness to us as a nation. A 
dark cloud then had risen above our horizon, por- 
tentous, to some, of a coming storm. But the mass 
of politicians and people had either not noticed, or 
did not regard it, then, as at all ominous of evil. 
We took occasion to press the admonition, as inti- 
mated by the divine providence, to rejoice with fear 
and trembling, and to mingle repentings and hum- 
Mings of heart before God for our sins, with our 
thanksgivings. 

To-day we assemble, in accordance with the 
proclamation of the President of the United States, 



to implore the mercy and forgiveness of God, in 
the midst of discord, perplexity and perils. "Hope," 
says he, "seems to have deserted the minds of 
men. All classes are in a state of confusion and 
dismay, and the wisest counsels of our best and 
purest men are wholly disregarded. In this, the 
hour of our calamity and peril, to whom shall we 
resort for relief, but to the God of our fathers? 
His omnipotent arm only, can save us from the 
awful effects of our own crimes and follies, our 
ingratitude and guilt towards our Heavenly Father." 
The trumpet of alarm has been blown from the 
very citadel. In bewilderment and trepidation, the 
head of the army, cabinet, civil government, and 
this once flourishing confederacy, invokes the nation 
to repentance and confession of individual and 
national sins; "to acknowledge God's justice in their 
punishment ; to implore Him to remove from our hearts 
the false pride that might prompt to persevere in 
wrong; to restore the good will and friendship of 
former days between the people of our several 
States; to save us from the horrors of civil war 
and "blood-guiltiness;" to "desert us not in this 
hour of extreme peril, but to remember us as He 
did our lathers, in the darkest days of the revolu- 
tion, and preserve our Constitution and our Union, 
the works of their hands, for ages yet to come." 

These are all matters legitimate and appropriate 
to the present exigencies. Whatever different per- 
sons may think of the spirit, and motives, and 
policy of the President, it ill becomes any one, 
especially members, elders, and ministers of the 



church of Christ to set an example of party spirit, 
pride of opinion, disrespect for the highest govern- 
mental authority, and thus sanction the lawlessness, 
contempt of rule, and atheistic idea of liberty prev- 
alent, by refusing to unite in an humble appeal 
to God for our common country, at the request of 
the chief magistracy. This is virtually to aid and 
abet the scoffs and sneers of the infidel partisan, 
" the wicked," who, as the psalmist says, " through the 
pride of his countenance will not seek after God," 
"whose judgments are far above out of his sight; 
who puffeth at his enemies, and saith in his heart, 
there is no danger, we shall not be moved, we shall 
never see adversity." * Even should there be bewil- 
derment, misapprehension, neglect of duty, or worse — 
so that there might be reason to fear the betrayal 
of trust, or the manifestation of imbecility on the 
part of those to whose courage, and wisdom, and 
counsels, the management of the great affairs of 
State is confided — the greater is the reason, the 
louder is the call of providence, to make an appeal 
to the God of our fathers, and enroll our names 
under His banner, when He demands "Who is on 
the Lord's side?" "Who will rise up for Me against 
the evil doer? or who will stand up for me against 
the workers of iniquity?"! 

"Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the 
people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city 
and the Lord hath not done it?" J Whatever we 
may think about the political and partisan causes, 
that have led to the present trouble and tumults 

* Psalm 10 : 4, 6. t Psalm 94 : 16. t Amos 3 : 6. 



G 

among the people of this land; however foolishly or 
wisely and reproachfully, men may talk and reason 
about the nature and sources of the peril and per- 
plexity of the country, the Lord's hand is in it. 
"The Lord God of hosts," the prophet says, "is He 
that toucheth the land, and it shall melt, and all 
that dwell therein shall mourn."* If He had not 
seen sin in us, and we had not, in some wa}^, as a 
people sorely displeased Him, He had not smitten 
us, and brought upon us the things we fear. It is 
His righteous providence that has commanded and 
raised the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves 
that toss the great ship of State like a foundering 
bark upon the billows, and cause our rulers to reel 
to and fro, to stagger like a drunken man, and be 
at their wits' end. 

It is well that there is a God to whom we may 
pray. As many a bewildered crew upon the stormy 
deep, when their creaking, shattered vessel has 
mounted up to the heavens, and gone down again 
to the depths, and their soul melted because of 
trouble, have cried unto the Lord, and He brought 
them out of their distress, and made the storm a 
calm, so that the waves thereof were still; so has 
He done for us as a people — and so can He again 
do, and will — what all human wisdom and valor 
cannot accomplish, if we call upon Him with peni- 
tent and believing hearts, in this day of our 
calamity. 

The passages of Scripture we have selected and 

* Amos 9 : 5. 



read, as a guide and foundation for our reflections, 
are full of encouragement, and unfold to us abun- 
dant sources of hope. The one shows what God, 
replete with mercy and compassion, was willing to 
do, and often had done, for a people whose sins and 
iniquities had forfeited all just claim upon Him. 
The other is the prayer we may be emboldened to 
offer, if with penitent and believing hearts we seek 
forgiveness, purification, and the interposition of 
divine aid. The motives and argument of such 
prayer are to be derived from His own merciful 
nature, the abounding of His compassions in Jesus 
Christ, who is the glorious name of God — the em- 
bodiment and manifestation of His own infinite and 
adorable excellence — the brightness of .the Father's 
Glory, the express image of His person, the only 
hope and standing plea for mercy, at all available 
and efficacious, for a guilty sinner or a guilty people. 
That we may, intelligently and in faith, present 
our supplications to God this day, on our country's 
behalf, we propose to inquire: 

I. What are the sins for which God is contend- 
ing with us as a nation? 

II. On what grounds we may venture to pray 
for the preservation of the Constitution and the 
Union of our national confederacy? 

Every form and variety of sin and crime among a 
people does not deserve to be called national, however 
it may swell the amount of popular guilt. National 
sins are those, and those only, which, by reason of 
their commonness, frequency, popularity, and the 
state, grade, and condition of those who commit 



them, are allowed to pass, either without the pro- 
hibition of law, or without punishment by the en- 
forcement of law. Government is ordained of God 
for the protection of society against evil, and for 
the promotion of the public good. The moral law, 
or law of the ten commandments, is God's legisla- 
tion against crime, for the individual and general 
good. It lies at the foundation, and should ever be 
magnified as the basis, of all civil, political, and 
criminal statutes. Whatever tends to subvert the 
authority of the moral law, in any of its great 
organic provisions, and conflicts, or is inconsistent 
with its spirit and precepts, is, and ever must be, 
injurious to the peace, purity, and safety of indi- 
vidual citizens, and to the public good. 

What are the gross sins, against which God has 
denounced national judgments, and which, when un- 
restrained and unpunished by the civil magistracy. 
He, in His providence, will visit with the rod of 
His chastisement, the sacred Scriptures have clearly 
declared, and abundantly illustrated in various his- 
torical precedents therein recorded. Ordinarily, He 
does nut interfere by any temporal visitations of 
His punitive providence, to correct the crimes 
of men, where the magistrates or governmental 
authorities are attentive and faithful to their obli- 
gations in this respect. For such interposition is 
thereby rendered unnecessary. But, where they neg- 
lect their duties, and the people love, or consent, to 
have it so, and will elevate to, and sustain in office, 
corrupt men, so that the laws against the vices of 
society become a dead letter, and crimes prevail on 



every hand, there is nothing left for the general 
welfare and safety, but for God to interfere with 
His retributive judgments. Accordingly. He has 
said, "when the land sinneth against Me by tres- 
passing grievously, then will I stretch out my 
hand." * 

The most superficial observer cannot fail to dis- 
cover, in this country, the prevalence of various 
forms of vice, which have been tolerated and prac- 
ticed so extensively in society, that judgments from 
the hand of God have fallen upon us, frequently 
and extensively. Often have they been so marked, 
that they could not well be mistaken. Such are 
the intemperance in all classes, — the utter disrespect 
of truth — the prevalent falsehood and frauds in 
business, social intercourse, and the press, — the want 
of good faith and fidelity in the trusts and relations 
of life — the desecration of the Sabbath — the con- 
tempt of compacts and oaths and obligations of of- 
fice — profanity — licentiousness — lawlessness — oppres- 
sion — polygamy among the Mormons — adultery, sanc- 
tioned by divorce laws — avaricious extortion — and 
swindling operations of speculators, bankers and corpo- 
rations almost without end, which almost every where 
in our land corrupt society. Of these, and such 
like, the legislation and government of our several 
States have immediate and principal cognizance. 
However widely diffused are such, and kindred 
forms of vice and immorality, which, by reason of 
general extent may be, or become, national, all our 

* Ezekiel 14 : 13. 



10 

different States are not equally involved in the 
growing corruption and consequent condemnation. 

In estimating our national crimes, reference 
must be had to the peculiar features and functions 
of our Federal government, 

The want of any recognition of God, in the con- 
stitution of the United States, and even in the form 
of the Presidential oath of office which it prescribes, 
taken in connection with its declaration of absolute, 
unqualified sovereignty of the people, as the source of 
its authority, and the supreme law of the land, 
affords apparent and formal ground for this charge. 
The christian forms of oath, as sometimes, and 
commonly in the States, administered under it to 
different United States' officers, and the opinions 
and ruling of some of our State Judges, may, in 
practice have somewhat mitigated this charge: but, 
unquestionably, there is — in that non-recognition of 
Almighty God, and of Jesus Christ, the Lord of 
Lords and King of Kings, by whom princes decree jus- 
tice, and of the divine authority of the sacred Scrip- 
tures — sufficient reason to awake the fears, as it has 
ever done, of many virtuous, sober-minded, religious 
citizens, that its unqualified and virtually atheistic 
claim of popular sovereignty, irrespective of the 
law, the word, and the providence of God our 
Saviour, may have subjected us, as a nation, so far 
to His displeasure, as, to have forfeited for us 
the perpetuity of the Federal government, it 
established as the bond of union, and to secure, 
eventually, a demonstration from Him, of the dan- 
ger and licentious excesses of a liberty — and the 



11 

weakness, folly, and falsehood of any asserted right 
or ability for self-government — independent of Jeho- 
vah, and unrestricted by His supreme, universal, 
immutable law, and the counsels of His holy Scrip- 
tures. 

It has been thought also, and much more fre- 
quently, extensively, and confidently affirmed, that 
the slavery practiced in this land forms the great 
national sin. On this account, more than any other, 
it has been, and is, as confidently believed and pro- 
claimed, that mainly, if not exclusively, the Lord is 
dealing with us in His providence, and threatening 
to pull down upon our heads the fair and noble 
structure of this confederacy. The evils and the 
crimes, however, either incident to or involved in 
the system of southern slavery — which makes human 
persons property equally with chattels and cattle, 
and thus degrades human beings originally created 
in the image of God, — do not, as we think, impli- 
cate directly, either the Constitution of the United 
States, or the compact under it, or all of the States, 
much less the citizens, generally, of our confederacy. 
Were this the fact, we could have no faith or hope 
in the efficacy of prayer to God to preserve and 
perpetuate our Union. For we can cherish no hope 
of permanent security and prosperity for any peo- 
ple or nation whatever, if its constitution, or legis- 
lation under it, should be in direct and flagrant vio- 
lation of any of the great fundamental provisions 
of the law of God, the moral law, or law of the 
ten commandments, especially as expounded in the 
Scriptures by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. 



12 

Whether slavery, as it exists in our country, is 
in violation of that law of God, which is the law 
of love, holy, and just, and good, and true, requir- 
ing us to do to others as we would have them do 
to us, is a question of deep and vital moment. The 
moral bearing and aspect of this question, we have 
ever thought, should have been examined and dis- 
cussed, testified and proclaimed, in the spirit of love 
and forbearance. The church in this matter should 
have been the witness of Christ. From the moment 
it became entangled with party political strifes, and 
the slavery question and discussions began to assume 
a sectional consequence, through the collisions of 
interest, commerce, politics, and struggles for office 
and authority, we feared, and averred, that the 
results would prove disastrous. 

The attributes of slavery in the South, are to 
be mainly traced, in the statutary codes, the social 
regulations, practices, and habits, with their legiti- 
mate fruits, in the different States, where, by local 
laws it is defined, characterized, protected and main- 
tained, both as a species of chattel property and a 
domestic institution, forming an element, or entering 
into the very structure, of the civil State, but not 
of general national society. The Federal constitu- 
tion, while it recognizes a right to service from one 
human person to another, degrades not our common 
humanity by making men property like beasts of 
burden. 

The original patriarchal idea of servitude, re- 
cognized in the Bible history of Abraham, although 
sophistically referred to by the advocates of Aineri- 



13 

can slavery as its "sanction," went no further. 
Such, also, was the slavery originally, to a great 
extent, if not generally, in our own country, ante- 
rior to the adoption of the Federal constitution. 
All of the colonies had more or less of it in them 
before the American Revolution. In all but Massa- 
chusetts it still existed at the adoption of the Fed- 
eral constitution. Whatever, and however, great 
were the evils and sins to which slavery led, the 
slaveholder was not regarded as a sinner above all 
others; nor slavery as criminal under all circumstan- 
ces, and the very worst of crimes. The Northern 
and some of the Middle States repented of it — 
modified as it then was in them, in accordance 
with the letter of the constitution, and its spirit, — and 
put it away, by a wise and salutary system of gradual 
emancipation, believing, that what God denounced 
by Noah as a curse upon Canaan, neither was, nor 
ever could be, meant by Him to be understood and 
practiced as a blessing, and desirable in the social 
state. 

Nevertheless, commercial interests and relations, 
various social ties of marriage, kindred, trade, be- 
quest, and enterprises of business, involve, no doubt, 
a considerable portion of the citizens of our free 
States, indirectly and incidentally, as well as directly 
in the guilt and evils of this thing, and thence, 
create a sympathy and sensitiveness touching it, 
which often, and naturally, expresses itself in the 
conflicts and platforms of party politics. But, by no 
public act of organic law or of their governments, can 
it be said, that the free States have made themselves 



14 

partakers of the sins of slavery, appropriate and pe- 
culiar to the degrading of human beings or persons, 
by making and regarding them as chattel property. 
Some, indeed, have contended that they did so, by 
the adoption, first, of the Federal constitution, and, 
subsequently, of the Missouri compromise, in 1820, 
and especially by the legislation of Congress, pursuant 
to the constitutional compact, requiring fidelity in car- 
rying out its provisions, relative to the rendition of 
fugitives. A party, in a few of the free States, 
especially Massachusetts and Pennsylvania — whose 
leaders have been characterized by what we regard 
the most arrant infidelity, and repudiation of the 
plenary and miraculous inspiration and divine au- 
thority of the sacred scriptures, zealous, mistaken fa- 
natics — under erroneous pleas of philanthropy, have, 
while blaspheming the word of God, denounced the 
Federal Constitution and Union as fraught with 
guilt, sufficient to provoke the judgments of heaven. 
Their language and abuse of "Washington and the 
constitution, it is not fitting here to quote; but they 
have thought they were doing service to both God 
and man, especially the slave, to rend and destroy 
our Union. We have never been able to see that 
their construction of the constitution is just, or 
capable of being sustained; either by the legitimate 
meaning of the language, or by the debates and 
history of the convention that formed it, and of the 
legislatures that adopted it. The Missouri compro- 
mis< — which indeed changed the policy of the Fed- 
eral administration and the dominant party, and which 
we deplored at the time as mischievous, however it 



15 

may have been a great mistake — was nevertheless 
conceived and formed in 1820, for the maintenance 
of treaty-faith, pledged as it was thought, in the 
purchase of Louisiana. 

Immediate and unqualified emancipation began 
in 1833-4, to be proclaimed and demanded by cer- 
tain moral and political extremists, as the only 
proof of repentance, and the only salvation of the 
country. And because the Constitution of the United 
States neither possesses, nor could be made by 
amendment to possess, power to accomplish this, 
whatever might increase the friction and hasten 
the dissolution of the Union, found ready and cor- 
dial entertainment and sympathy. 

Many of the ministry, and members of different 
evangelical churches, were zealously affected with 
the thought of immediate emancipation as alike the 
duty and safety of our country. The relation of 
master and slave, slavery per se, without any reserve 
or qualification whatever, was pronounced a God- 
provoking sin, the greatest men can commit, and 
all involved in that relationship denounced as guilty 
of man-stealing, robbery, murder, and whatever 
other crimes are incident to the system as spread 
out in the statutes, sustained by law, and, in fla- 
grant cases, carried into practice, in all, or any of the 
southern States! This rampant zeal — sustained, as 
we have ever thought, by fallacious logic — agitated 
and rent churches, united ecclesiastically, and pre- 
viously walking in harmonious christian fellowship. 
It engendered alienations, strifes and divisions be- 
tween Congregationalists and Presbyterians; repudi- 



16 

ated the plan of union upon which they had, for more 
than the third of a century, happily co-operated; 
separated them completely as distinct and rival 
denominations; drove the ploughshare of division 
between the northern and southern churches; and 
carried the war of angry debate and irreconcilable 
antagonisms, into the different great national associ- 
ations for missionary and tract operations. 

The judgment of a large portion of the min- 
istry and churches, in the southern States, and also 
in the northern, could not see and admit, either the 
obligation, the benevolence, the practicability, or the 
safety of immediate emancipation, as then and thus 
urged. The consciences of multitudes who sustained 
the relation of master to slave, did not, or could 
not be made to feel, that the simple relationship of 
master to slave, or slavery under all circumstances, 
was sinful; and especially, when they knew, that 
there were obligations of guardianship, dictates of 
humanity, and claims of enlightened charity, which 
not only forbade immediate and unqualified emanci- 
pation, but required the continuance of that rela- 
tion and sometimes its formation. From the denun- 
ciations of those — who neither saw nor would admit 
such obligations, but who held them up to scorn 
and infamy, and sought to excommunicate them by 
declarative resolutions from the church of God. as 
unworthy a place in it — they turned away, and said, 
" how can two walk together unless they be agreed!" 
preferring secession and separation to strife and 
obloquy. 



17 

In their attempts to interpret the report of their 
own consciences, which acquitted them from the 
false, unqualified charges of guilt, made against them 
by their northern brethren, they found themselves 
in circumstances where the temptation became na- 
tural and powerful, to justify slavery as a system, 
as well as to excuse all its developments, and ex- 
onerate themselves from the criminality personally and 
promiscuously charged upon them. Inasmuch as 
the Bible, — which gives an account of God's civil 
legislation concerning slavery, and the counsels and 
precepts of divine wisdom in relation to the moral 
duties and obligations growing out of the relation 
of christians to it, and to the governments that toler- 
ated or enacted it, — has thus distinctly recognized 
the existence of that relation, and enjoined recip- 
rocal duties on masters and servants, the judgment 
and conscience of southern ministers and churches 
began to claim, what none of a former generation 
had ever thought of doing, that God, by such legis- 
lation, had sanctioned it, and made it as truly a 
divine ordinance as He had government itself; and 
that, indeed, it was but a species of government, 
provided and ordained by His wisdom and benevolence 
for the benefit of the domestic and social state. 
Rev. Mr. H. J. Van Dyke, of Brooklyn, and Dr. 
Palmer, of New Orleans, have volunteered their 
casuistry in thfs matter, as a writer in Mississippi, 
years ago, had done, in opposition to the ultra views 
of immediate emancipation that had been inculcated 
and propagated in the North. It is proof to us of 

the blinding influence, which sjnnpathy with party 
2a 



18 

politics, and polemic casuistry, can exert upon the 
mind and conscience. These excellent brethren 
seem not for one moment to have adverted to what is 
undeniably true, that God, when legislating as the 
civil head of Israel, — -just as human governments 
ever find it necessary for them to do, — enacted laws 
in view of evils nascent or innate in corrupt society, 
for the purpose of restricting, restraining, and ulti- 
mately curing them; and that such legislation is 
far, very far, from implying His allowance or appro- 
val, much less His sanction of them. To claim 
that slavery is a divine ordinance, because God has 
legislated concerning it, indicates, either an inability 
or unwillingness, through prejudice or passion, to 
distinguish between enduring a present evil, in a 
given state of society for the prevention of greater, 
and sanctioning such evil in every condition of so- 
ciety. Never was there a greater nonsequitur, more 
palpable and offensive sophistry, than that into 
which these writers have been betrayed. 

Such casuistry has been one of the melancholy 
results of the alienations and separations produced in 
the churches by the political agitation of this subject. 
Shut out and cut off from the sympathy of the 
churches and the christian community, generally, of the 
North, the southern churches and christians, very 
naturally, received and relished the sympathy of 
unbelieving men and political partisans, who, from 
mistaken considerations of State and national policy, 
were seeking to protect and propagate and perpetu- 
ate the slavery, in connection with which they had 
been born and nursed, educated and trained. Nor 



19 

have the ministry and churches at the North been 
wholly exempt from a similar and hurtful influence 
upon their judgment and consciences, by sympathy 
with political partisanships, inducing a rancorous 
spirit of denunciation often mistaken for, and claimed 
to be, a superior piety. 

The essential and irreconcileable antagonism be- 
tween free labor and slave labor can never be cured, 
permanently and completely, by any system of hu- 
man legislation that attempts to harmonize them. 
Light and darkness are not more at variance, radi- 
cally and immutably, than are liberty and bondage. 
The conflict between them has well been pronounced, 
by one of our eminent statesmen, "irrepressible." 
Compacts and legislation may ease its violence; 
and, if wise and just, lead to the gradual salutary 
disappearance of the one before the other. But 
the experiments of past ages and nations from the 
first, have proved, in the recorded history of man- 
kind, that freedom and slavery cannot dwell per- 
manently, harmoniously, safely, and prosperously, 
together. 

God's legislation on the subject, found in the 
book of Leviticus, so far from being a sanction of 
slavery, was actually a wise and wonderful system 
of gradual, but certain and inevitable emancipation. 
The history of the Jewish nation proved and illus- 
trated it. 

The patriarchal slavery, claimed to have been 
sanctioned by the example of Abraham, was not 
hereditary. There is no proof that it descended to 
Isaac or Ishmael. Certainly none that it was 



20 

transmitted to Jacob and Esau, in the third genera- 
tion. 

God's ethical precepts on the subject in the New 
Testament, on which Mr. Van Dyke and others 
have founded their erring deductions, were explicitly 
designed, as the context shows, not to sanction the 
political code and usages of the Roman Empire j but 
to bring out and exhibit, in the clearest and strongest 
possible light, the moral power of that christian be- 
nevolence, which makes the master and the slave 
alike feel that they are brethren of one family, and 
which is a much more potent force, to remedy and 
overcome the evils and existence of slavery, than 
any mere political expedients, or system of civil 
legislation, that human wisdom without it can ever 
devise. 

The extremists' views, on both sides of this ques- 
tion, and in both sections of our country, which have, 
for the last twenty-six years, been pressed in various 
political and ecclesiastical contests, have resulted in 
deep, permanent, and, we fear, fatal estrangements. 
The doctrines of immediate emancipation, and of the 
sin of slavery j>cr se, as taught by ultra abolitionists, 
have irritated the South far more than personal liberty 
bills, or the election of a republican candidate for 
the President. The pro-slavery teachings and vio- 
lence of southern preachers and politicians, have, in 
their turn, exasperated the North. The thrift and 
prosperity of the North, their progress in wealth, 
population, and improvement, whatever may have 
been the policy of the Federal government, — 
forcing, at one time into commerce, another manu- 



21 

factures, and at another free trade — have proved so 
illustrative and demonstrative of the value and effi- 
ciency of free labor, as to have increasingly excited the 
envy, jealousy, and rivalry of the South, whose 
exhausted farms, dilapidated domiciles, disordered 
finances, mortgaged property, depreciated lands, and 
other evidences of decay, made them look, with an 
angry and suspicious eye, upon the commerce, manu- 
factures, enterprise, capital, resources, and enhanced 
prosperity of the free States. Socially, politically, 
religiously, there have been developed, and are, an- 
tagonisms, which have already rent the most solemn 
compacts, and destroyed the most sacred sympathies. 
How they are to be reconciled, if possible, is the 
great problem of the day, which leaves all our sages 
and statesmen utterly at fault. Well has the 
President, in his proclamation for a fast, invited 
one and all, both North and South, to implore God 
to remove " the false pride of heart which impels, 
for consistency's sake, to persevere in wrong." It 
is God only who can do it. 

Concession, without the sacrifice of moral prin- 
ciple, and in the spirit of forbearance and for- 
giveness, may, and we would fain hope, by God's 
blessing, will do it. Crimination and recrimi- 
nation, charges of provocation and blame pri- 
marily and mainly, by either party, will never 
accomplish it. Civil war and bloodshed will 
render it forever impossible. Here, in this very 
pride of opinion, we think, lies much of the guilt, 
the peril and perplexity connected with the question 
of slavery in our Federal relations. If the North 



22 

will consent that the South adjust for themselves 
the evils of their own social state, and, ceasing to 
traduce, denounce, and vituperate, will extend to 
them the good will and. charities of christian broth- 
erhood; and if the South will not insist upon ex- 
tending the acknowledged evils of their own social 
state, by demanding their admission and approba- 
tion in new States and Territories, there to spread 
and prolong this cancer in the body politic, there 
may be hope. But if the North can only be 
reconciled, on the ground of anti-slavery propagan- 
dism within the southern States, or the South, upon 
the ground of the extension of slavery by right of 
their construction of the constitution; and if the 
constitution must be changed to meet the views of 
either, then is our unity forever at an end. The 
antagonisms of party should never regulate the ad- 
ministration of our government. It should be con- 
ducted on higher principles. If the pride of opinion 
and the oppositions of party, cannot be overcome, by 
the spirit of patriotism and devotion to the public 
good, there can be no safe and peaceful deliverance 
for us from our present perplexities. The gaping 
fissures must increase. The separation must become 
fragmentary; and dissolution follow, without hope 
or possibility of ever again crystallizing or aggre- 
gating, in the same or any other happy consolidated 
Union, similar to that, which, for more than half a 
century, has made us, as a nation, the wonder and 
glory of the world. 

Our social, political, moral and religious strength 
as a nation hitherto, has been in our union. The 



23 

one tie, that binds all together, once severed and 
acknowledged to be so, divides not, by a wide and 
yawning chasm, As in the human body, the disin- 
tegrating process of dissolution supervenes, the mo- 
ment that the vital forces, through their constitu- 
tional channels, cease to operate; so will and must 
it be in the national. Discordant interests, rival 
factions, predatory incursions, servile insurrections, 
despotic oppressions, rapacious robberies, contending 
ambitions, selfish demagogism, phrenzied excitements, 
hostile religions, civil wars degenerating into contests 
of aspiring military chieftains, and intriguing schemes 
of corrupt monopolies and men of wealth, will not 
fail to repeat, in more aggravated and distressing 
story, the revolutions and disasters of disordered, 
wretched, ruined Mexico. May the God of heaven 
mercifully interpose to prevent it! 

We fear, however, that the complications and 
exacerbation of this great moral, social and political 
evil of slavery, around which the eyes and hearts, 
the hopes and fears, the anxieties and lamentations 
of the nation this day cluster, may be traced to a 
guilt, even more strictly national than it, and which, 
we have judged and felt for nearly the third of a 
century, is the great public national crime God 
is now punishing, by the present agitation, excite- 
ment and alarm, as He has been in years past, by 
various processes of demoralization. The slavery 
trouble has been the entering wedge and battle axe, 
that quickly followed, with its strokes of wrath, 
after the offense of which we shall now speak. 

By treaty both with Georgia, and with the 



24 

Indians in the territory, which she ceded to the 
United States, the Cherokee Indians were put under 
the fostering care of the Federal government. Their 
lands, eight million acres of which they refused to sell, 
were recognized as their own, and reserved to them, 
by solemn treaty. Their absolute title to them was 
admitted to be beyond the power of the States or of 
Congress, and to be alienated only, by treaties honor- 
ably and fairly made, and with full assent of their 
own. Missionaries were established among them, 
under the direction and support of the American 
Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, and of 
other missionary associations of different religious de- 
nominations. By express stipulations, on the part 
of the United States Government, a limited territory, 
protection, and inviolate territorial limits, were guar- 
anteed to the Cherokee nation of Indians. They 
had attained to civilization, and established among 
themselves the trades, arts, and religion, upon the 
lands of their ancestors. Having, by the advice of 
the President of the United States, organized a gov- 
ernment of their own, consisting of legislative, judi- 
ciary, and executive departments, administered on 
republican principles, they had risen in character, 
condition, and prospects; and were bound to us as 
brothers, by the ties of that Christianity, which, in 
common with us, they had professed. But it was 
discovered that their lands contained gold. 

Georgia claimed, that according to her construction 
of the treaty with the United States government, by 
which she ceded her territory, the Federal government 
had failed to fulfill its provisions of that treaty; although 



25 

Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and Calhoun, had 
been the foster-fathers of the citizens of the Cherokee 
nation, as they were called in the Holsten treaty, 
and the Senate of the United States had sanctioned 
the acts, by which they had risen into a highly 
civilized state. While refusing to sell their lands, 
and planting themselves on the treaty guaranty of 
the Federal government, with covetous and impa- 
tient eye, the State of Georgia claimed the right of 
possession ; and extended her laws over her fellow- 
christians of Moravian, Presbyterian, Baptist and 
Methodist churches j by which they were brought 
into a state of degradation and defenselessness like 
that of slavery, and declared to be incapable of 
being witnesses or parties in a court of justice. 
They were made outlaws upon their own lands, and 
allowed but the privilege of choosing between exile 
and chains. 

It may be proper here to enter into details. 
In 1829 the Cherokees possessed a regularly organ- 
ized civil government, and a written language. 
The latter was an invention of a native uninstructed 
Cherokee. Unlike to any that ever existed, it 
was yet so complete, that adults, by the use of it, 
could learn to read their native tongue in ten, five, 
and even three days. The mass of the people, 
in their dress, houses, furniture, agriculture, imple- 
ments, manner of cultivating the soil, raising stock, 
providing for their families, and in their estimate 
of the value of an education, did not suffer by a 
comparison with the whites in the surrounding set- 
tlements. The great body of the people had ex- 



26 

ternally embraced the christian religion. Intemper- 
ance, the bane of the Indian as well as of the white 
man, had been checked. The laws of the nation 
rigorously excluded intoxicating liquors from all 
public assemblies. In this respect they set a noble 
and lofty example, worthy of being imitated by our 
Congress and State Legislatures. Numerous and 
efficient societies for the promotion of temperance, 
had been organized, and prosperity smiled upon 
them. But, in two years afterward, in spite of all 
their improvements, by the action of Georgia, the 
nation had been thrown into a distracted state ; 
their government prostrated; their council forbidden 
to assemble; their laws declared null and void; 
their magistrates prohibited, under severe penalties, 
from enforcing them; intoxicating liquors introduced 
without restraint ; the country traversed with armed 
troops; their property plundered; their persons ar- 
rested and imprisoned; their land, — known to be 
theirs by ancestral and immemorial possession, and 
guaranteed to them by numerous and perfectly ex- 
plicit treaties, — claimed by others ; and they them- 
selves threatened with immediate ejectment ! 

The missionaries, at four stations lying within 
the territory claimed by Georgia, were served with 
copies of a law, requiring an oath of allegiance to 
that State within a limited period, or imprisonment 
for four years in the penitentiary for refusal. Im- 
portant civil, moral, and religious rights, and per- 
sonal liberties, were thus invaded and violated. 
The missionaries could not, in good conscience, take 
the oath ; for it would be an abandonment of the 



27 

Indians' rights secured by treaty with the Federal 
government, and an admission that Georgia was 
right. 

A detachment of the Georgia guard, consisting of 
twenty-six men, armed and mounted, proceeded to each 
of the four missionary stations, and arrested three 
of the missionaries found there. They were, how- 
ever, set free, by the Judge of the Superior Court 
of Gwinnet county, on the ground that they were under 
the patronage of the United States government, and 
were in such sense its agents, that the laws of 
Georgia did not apply to them. The Governor of 
Georgia corresponded with the President of the 
United States on the subject. The result was, that 
the latter did not consider the missionaries as in 
any sense agents of the government. Thereupon 
the missionaries were ordered, within ten days, to 
remove out of the State, or take the required oath. 

Several of the missionaries, Messrs. Buttrick, 
Proctor, and Thompson, thought it expedient to 
remove, with their families. Mr. Thompson was 
subsequently arrested, and treated in the most bru- 
tal manner, for visiting his station. Mr. Worcester 
and Dr. Butler were arrested, and subjected to cruelties 
and indignities, such as savages themselves would 
scarcely inflict upon their captives. They were 
tried; and along with eight other white men, one a 
missionary of the Methodist Episcopal church, were 
sentenced to four years' hard labor in the peniten- 
tiary. On their arrival at the door of the prison, 
they were all offered a pardon and release, on con- 
dition, of their removing from the Indian territory 



28 

claimed by the State of Georgia, or of taking the oath 
of allegiance to its laws. All but two of them ac- 
cepted these humiliating terms. Mr. Worcester and 
Dr. Butler, feeling that obedience to such laws 
would be treason against God, conceded nothing, 
and were committed to the penitentiary. 

The matter was brought before the Supreme 
Court of the United States, on a writ of error. 
Having been ably argued by Messrs. Wirt and Ser- 
geant, Chief Justice Marshall pronounced his decis- 
ion. He reviewed the whole subject of the Indian 
titles, the treaties made with the Indians, and the 
laws of Georgia, which extended the jurisdiction of 
the State over the Cherokee country. The laws 
of Georgia were pronounced repugnant to the con- 
stitution, the treaties, and the laws of the United 
States. The mandate of the Supreme Court was 
instantly issued, reversing and annulling the judg- 
ment of the Superior Court of Georgia, and ordering 
all proceedings in the indictment against the pris- 
oners forever to cease, declaring the prisoners to be 
thereby dismissed. The Superior Court of Georgia 
refused to obey the mandate, or discharge the pris- 
oners. The authority of the Supreme Court of 
the United States thus set at defiance, the country 
became excited, especially the religious and order- 
loving, law-abiding citizens. 

There existed a difference of opinion, if not a 
contest for the ultimate authority, between the 
President and the Chief Justice of the Supreme 
Court of the United States. The latter, it was 
known, would require a military enforcement. The 



29 

counsel of the imprisoned missionaries prepared a 
memorial to the former, praying for the interposi- 
tion of his authority to enforce the decision of the 
court. The missionaries gave notice of their inten- 
tion to move the Supreme Court for a further pro- 
cess. They had been sustained by the public 
sentiment of the christian community, especially at 
the North, as well as by their official advisers and 
directors in the work of missions, the prudential 
Committee of the Amerian Board of Conference for 
Foreign Missions. It was thought by many to be 
a proper juncture and opportunity to settle the 
question, whether the Supreme Court or the Presi- 
dent of the United States, the Judiciary or Execu- 
tive, possessed the ultimate authority; and especially, 
amid the rising excitement of South Carolina nulli- 
fication, to put to the test the authority of the 
treaties, laws, and Constitution of the United States, 
and the strength and integrity of the Federal gov- 
ernment and Union. Georgia had bid defiance to 
the authority of the Supreme Court 3 and, by a cor- 
rupting policy, — appealing to human cupidity, for 
the distribution among her citizens, by lottery, 
140 acres each, of the whole Cherokee country lying 
withhi her chartered limits, previously surveyed and 
divided into lots for that purpose, — had rendered her 
legislation and defiant claims popular. 

We shall not further ti^spass on your time here, 
to enter into other details of this disgraceful history. 
It may suffice to say, that upon various consulta- 
tions it was thought inexpedient — we say not by 
whom, but not by the imprisoned missionaries them- 



30 

selves or their counsel, — to present their memorial 
to the President for the enforcement of the decision 
of the court. My personal reminiscences here of 
matters learned from Dr. Butler himself — who spent 
several days in my house as my honored guest, 
soon after his removal from the penitentiary — are as 
painful at this distant day, as they were in their 
commencement, having been subversive of the 
respectful consideration previously entertained for 
the patriotic and religious men, whose timidity, 
called and mistaken for prudence, led them to 
change the counsel and policy, in accordance with 
which the missionaries had all along acted in the 
assertion of right and liberty. 

It was well understood that the Supreme Court 
of the United States would sustain its own decision, 
and demand the support of the executive authority 
of the government, by military force if necessary. 
And it was also as well understood, that the Presi- 
dent was not inclined to enforce it. To prosecute 
the case would lead to a collision of the au- 
thorities, and the result was thought doubtful. 
The missionaries were, therefore, often and earnestly 
counseled to desist from their attempt to obtain 
release by a military enforcement of the decision of 
the Supreme Court. They were assured of an un- 
conditional release in case they would do so. But 
they refused. They smirned a pardon. They 
would not escape from the prison, even when the 
doors were thrown open for them. Persons in the 
confidence of the Governor of Georgia visited them, 
and earnestly solicited them to desist from the 



31 

prosecution. They made "no solicitation, no over- 
ture, no compromise " whatever. 

Two members elect of Congress visited them, 
and told them officially from the Governor, that 
they would be discharged without concession, with- 
out condition, or even without application to the 
Governor. To desist from the prosecution of the 
suit, they were assured, would end the whole matter, 
It would relieve the Court, the President, the esti- 
mable Governor, the State of Georgia, and the 
country. Their friends and counselors in Boston, 
no longer advised to firmness in the prosecution. 
The prisoners' counsel dropped all proceedings. 
Messrs. Worcester and Butler were set at liberty by 
proclamation from the Governor of Georgia, directed 
to the keeper of the penitentiary; and the Governor's 
carriage, it was currently reported, was in waiting 
for them when they left the prison. They imme- 
diately returned to the stations which they had 
respectively occupied in the Cherokee country, and 
resumed their missionary labors. 

The country and its authorities, had passed a 
crisis. But the fate of the Cherokee was sealed. 
The robbery and violence of Georgia had proved 
victorious; and the Supreme Court of the United 
States then received the first blow which struck 
it from its lofty position as the ultimate authority, — ■ 
the grand balance wheel and regulating power in 
our government — and rendered it, as many fear, 
rather the dim reflector of the policy of the execu- 
tive, than the independent interpeter of the consti- 
tution. Be that as it may, it has suffered great 



32 

loss in public confidence and estimation at the 
North. The executive policy triumphed over right. 
By means of a treaty obtained from unauthorized 
and unfaithful representatives of the Cherokee peo- 
ple, through the aid of intoxicating drinks — a plan 
for removing the Indians, pronounced benevolent, 
was carried out. The Cherokees were denational- 
ized; and scenes of pillage, plunder, and mortality, 
shocking to relate, consummated and aggravated 
the guilt of a violated treaty. The inspired law- 
giver of the Jewish nation proclaimed: 

"Cursed be he that removeth his neighbor's 
landmark, and all the people shall say amen. 

"Cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander 
out of the way, and all the people shall say amen. 

"Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of 
the stranger, fatherless, and widow, and all the 
people shall say amen." 

The landmarks were removed; the blind and 
helpless were led out of the way and banished from 
their habitations and homes, by violence; judgment 
was perverted; Washington dishonored; the Senate 
of the United States stultified j and treaty docu- 
ments, preserved in the treasuries of State, were 
torn from our statute books, and scattered to the 
winds. 

It was then declared by many, and we felt at 
the time, no hesitation in saying, that the nation 
had incurred the guilt of violated treaties; and that 
a bitter roll of "mourning, and lamentation, and 
woe," would be unfolded to the people of the United 
States. It bus been written in characters indelible. 



33 

Every where may be met the black traces of that 
fatal seal, which then was stamped upon the hitherto 
stainless escutcheon of our country. The natural 
and legitimate influence of that example has demor- 
alized the land. "We have hatched cockatrice's 
eggs, and woven the spider's web. He that 
hath eaten of the eggs has died, and that 
which was crushed hath broken out into a viper." 
We have sowed the wind and are reaping the 
whirlwind. God has withdrawn from us the pro- 
tection of moral restraint, once mighty to protect 
and preserve. It is not at all strange, that treaties 
and compacts have lost their sacredness in the eyes 
of multitudes; that the constitution has ceased to 
be a bond of union; that States have repudiated 
their obligations ; that oaths of office are disregarded ; 
that plighted faith is violated 5 that honor and hon- 
esty need the strong power of the law to support 
them; that the law itself has lost its commanding 
majesty; that fraud, and peculation, and corruption 
can be traced from the councils of aldermen to the 
cabinet of the chief magistrate; and that sober- 
minded, virtuous citizens stand amazed, and are 
ready to ask in the language of holy writ, " when 
the Son , of man cometh shall he find faith on the 
earth V 

The success of Georgia emboldened Alabama ; South 
Carolina soon after proclaimed nullification. The 
Supreme Court of the United States has lost much 
of its power and respect. The chief executive 
having claimed to interpret the constitution for 
himself, th*e spirit of lawlessness has grown apace; 

3a 



34 

and contempt for institutions, usages, and compacts, 
time-honored and fraught with benefits, now gives 
indication that the very joints and sinews of society 
have been dislocated and strained. The strifes and 
agitation of slavery have not only turned the halls 
of Congress, often, into a bear-garden, and given 
exhibitions of brutal violence ; but churches have 
repudiated compacts, and set aside at will all corpo- 
rate rights. The General Assembly of the Presby- 
terian church, by one party act, through a packed 
majority, ignored the covenant of the fathers j rode 
violently over the constitution -, set at naught all the 
obligations of discipline; and by one summary ex- 
scinding act, cut off four synods, with their pres- 
byteries and congregations, and GO, 000 members; 
seized and held the property and possessions, wrested 
from those who had largely contributed it; and hold 
it still, though every decision of courts, where trials 
have been conducted, have recognized or affirmed 
the legal and constitutional body, to be that with 
which they ecclesiastically broke faith, and refuse 
to resume it. 

Other ecclesiastical bodies have been rent also. 
And our own New School Presbyterian Assem- 
bly, in reaching over a synod to express a judg- 
ment of censure bearing on a Presbytery, without 
trial or constitutional right, gave occasion and pre- 
text, on the ground of violated faith, for the separa- 
tion of southern brethren from us, and the organi- 
zation of a new body. 

The traces of this thing are interminable. Its 
roots strike deep into every part of society. Its de- 



35 

velopments and growths, we regard as even worse, 
and far more fatal to the welfare and safety of this 
Union, than slavery itself, however pestiferous that 
may be, and blighting to the prosperity of the 
States that cherish it. It is this readiness to vio- 
late compacts, to set aside constitutional law, to re- 
pudiate the obligations of good faith, that we re- 
gard the most alarming feature of the times. If 
not cured or corrected, it must prove the inevitable 
precursor of our ruin. How it is to be remedied, 
God only knows. Our only hope is in the effusion 
of the Holy Spirit, which the Lord Jesus Christ has 
power to grant, by which to turn the heart of this 
people back again unto Him. This can give wis- 
dom, and firmness, and prudence, and zeal, and 
fidelity in our rulers; and, reforming the masses, 
counteract the influence of corrupt examples and de- 
moralizing ambitions. God grant a baptism of this 
Spirit to the whole nation, to bring us to repentance, 
and teach us to keep His statutes, and command- 
ments, and ordinances, as the means of our happi- 
ness and security. 

II. A word or two, in conclusion, as to the 
grounds on which we may venture to pray in hope 
for this, as the means of preserving us a united 
people. 

First, there is the boundless and amazing 
grace and compassion of God, toward those that 
have no just claim upon Him. How often did He 
exhibit and exercise that grace and compassion, 
in the history of ungrateful and perfidious Israel! 
"Their heart was not right with Him, neither were 



36 

they steadfast in His covenant; but He being full 
of compassion, forgave their iniquity and destroyed 
them not: yea, many a time turned He His anger 
away, and did not stir up all His wrath j for He 
remembered they were but flesh; a wind that pas- 
seth away and cometh not again." It is as true 
in the past history of our own beloved country. 
Signal have been His interpositions, and abounding 
His compassions toward us as a nation. Oh, what 
a flood of grateful recollections does the history of 
this people bear along with it, from before the days 
of our revolutionary sires to the present. "He 
hath done great things for us whereof we have 
reason to be glad." 

When we look at the manifestation of His own 
amazing grace and compassion, His own lofty and 
glorious excellence, as the God "who delighteth in 
mercy," why should we despair? The fountain 
of His overflowing love is not exhausted. He is 
loath to execute His judgments in wrath. His 
own loving heart, His abounding compassions, well 
up, in exhaustless exuberant overflowings. What 
may we not hope and pray for from Him, whose 
name and nature is Love? Could the eyes and 
heart of this people but be fixed on God Himself, as 
He comes to us in Christ, filled with the Spirit, 
without measure, all would yet be well. With such 
a God, and such a Saviour, and such a Spirit, to 
appeal to, let us drive away our unbelieving, guilty 
fears, and draw near with the full assurance of 
faith as we pray : " Oh remember not against us 
former iniquities. Let Thy tender mercies speedily 



37 

prevent us — at this very moment rise before us, and 
keep us from sinking utterly — for we are brought 
very low. Help us, God of our salvation, for 
the glory of Thy name, and deliver us, and purge 
away our sins for Thy name's sake." 

This forms the second ground of hope, the con- 
scious exercise of penitence in an appeal to God for 
His help, that we may be delivered, and our sins 
be purged from us. Without this, all prayer to 
Him will prove unavailing. If we fast and pray 
for party strife and debate, and to smite with the fist 
of wickedness, or practice oppression and deceit, the 
Lord will not hear us. God knows our hearts; and 
He has said, "if we regard iniquity in our hearts 
He will not hear us." But He says, "Let the 
wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man 
his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, 
and He will have mercy upon him ; and to our 
God, for He will abundantly pardon." If this people, 
this day, though not universally, yet in sufficient 
numbers to give to God a public reason for the 
exercise of His clemency and compassion through 
Christ, shall truly and heartily renounce their sins, 
and confess and turn away from those things which 
have displeased Him, He will forgive, and not de- 
stroy us. Let each and every one of us, then, as 
we love our souls, our country, and our God, re- 
nounce and confess to Him, our own personal sins 
and those of the nation, in so far as we have 
knowledge and participation of them. 

We shall thus find that we can draw near to God 
with renewed confidence and enlarged expectations, 



38 

and be in a better frame and spirit to influence 
and lead from error and sin, our neighbors and 
friends who practice what we judge to be wrong. 

It is the glory of God to forgive : all the lustre of 
His name, all the excellencies of His character display 
themselves here. He has said, "I, even I, am He 
that blotteth out thy transgressions, and will not re- 
member thy sins any more for My name's sake; put 
Me in remembrance; declare thou that thou mayest 
be justified." If the hearts of the people to any 
extent, will only believe this, so that with conscious 
exercise of repentance for all past sins, they come 
to God, and throw themselves and this nation upon 
His grace and compassion, His very name and na- 
ture — the infinite, adorable excellencies of His char- 
acter, as they reveal themselves in the blessed Re- 
deemer, who is the name of God — will form the 
strong plea, the prevailing argument, so that with 
Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, we may confidently 
plead for our country as he did for his. "We ac- 
knowledge, Lord, our wickedness, and the in- 
iquity of our fathers, for we have sinned against 
Thee. Do not abhor us, for Thy name's sake; do 
not disgrace the throne of Thy glory." 

Finally, we may take occasion, from the terrible 
character of the evils deprecated, to become impor- 
tunate with God. Moses prayed with fervor, and 
fell down forty days and nights before the Lord, in 
prayer, that He would not destroy the nation. 
Dissolution and destruction are the evils that threaten 
us. If God gives not repentance to put away vol- 
untarily, the evils of slavery, and those it has 



39 

developed, He will, as He ever has done, interfere 
by His judgments to do it. Who can contemplate 
such a procedure of His providence, without shud- 
dering? It is no subject for flippant and angry 
debates or discussions and bitter revilings. It would 
seem that He hath smitten already with blindness, 
and that those more immediately periled, see not 
the disaster and ruin they are courting by the atti- 
tude they have assumed. If gradual emancipation 
is refused — as past history in every country has 
shown — insurrection, murder, conflagration, rapine, 
violence, will do it. Secession and separation will 
invite to these things, and, ere the crisis comes, who 
can tell how many hearts shall bleed, and homes 
be rendered desolate, by the horrors of civil war? 
It may be, that God shall leave us to folly and 
madness, to break the pillar of our constitution, 
shake down upon our heads the great and glorious 
temple of our confederacy, raised by the wisdom, 
and consecrated by the prayers of our sires of olden 
days, and involve ourselves in its ruins. But ere 
that day comes, while yet there is hope of averting 
the avenging stroke of heaven's wrath, it behooves 
every christian and patriot to try what conciliation, 
repentance, fervent prayer, intercession with God, 
can accomplish. We tremble in view of His judg- 
ments and wrath, for we are guilty. But knowing 
His great compassion, still let us pray, "0 Lord, 
though our enemies testify against us, do Thou, for 
Thy name's sake spare, and give not Thy heritage 
to reproach. Oh, the hope of Israel, and the Saviour 
thereof in time of trouble, why shouldst thou be as a 



40 

stranger in the land, and as a wayfaring man that 
turneth aside to tarry for a night? Why shouldst 
thou be as a man astonished; as a mighty man 
that cannot save? Yet Thou, Lord, art in the 
midst of us, and we are called by Thy name, leave 
us not!" 



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